Who Can? Spokane?

Quotes:

“Well you know what they say up my way? A decent farm comes up for sale and either the government or Ted Turner buys it.” A presumptive farmer talking on the phone at a thrift store where I got two leather jackets for $30 total. He then went on to talk about how you have to show the Bureau of Land Management some carcasses before they’ll go up in a helicopter and shoot the wolves. Of course when he called them up recently they said they didn’t have any money for that so this dude and some fellow farmers pitched in $60 each to rent their own helicopter and sharp shooter.

“My glove is my favorite Beach Boy.”  Everybody every day

“Mark’s on a river walk, John’s outside clearing his head, and Chuck’s looking for a bathroom.” Lisa’s entirely correct guess as to where we had disappeared to when Joe looked up from the dinner table and asked, “Where is everyone?”

Fauna: Violet Green Swallow (I knew a Violet Green in High School – wasn’t true though)

Our day started in Butte, which is a pretty small little town. No one is in a hurry and mining is so written into its DNA that you can’t go for long without being reminded of it.  From the strip mined (I assume that’s the correct term) terraced mountainside to the Miner’s Savings and Loan it’s a former boom town where over 22 billion tons of copper were removed from the ground. How do I know this statistic? Why from a visit to the World Mining Museum. Since we didn’t have a real long drive to Spokane we were able to do a little sightseeing. I was secretly hoping we would end up at the mining museum and it was awesome. They have a 15 building mining town recreated, an underground mining tour, (we didn’t get to do that) inexplicably a room full of dolls and action figures, and lots of rocks and minerals.

After that another gorgeous drive on the way to Spokane, with a bunch of intense pop up showers and at one point we were even sleeted upon. Joe scared the shit out of everyone by careening down the westward side of the mountains. He is a man of steely nerves that one. Spokane was looking grey and a little rough. Our expectations for this show were low because it was a very late addition to the tour and we hadn’t had time to get any press. And of course they were met completely. Carr’s Corner Tavern was run by a very nice young man named Aaron who had built the stage himself and had bought a fleet of vintage video games and pinball machines he was fixing himself. The best of which was the Sega Michael Jackson Moonwalk game. Didn’t work, so patrons of the future will have to “Save the Children.” He told us it was an uphill battle with the bar because it had been a “bum bar” for 11 years that opened up at 8 am.

Anyway, we ended up playing to 5 people, 2 of which actually came to see us. She was an old friend and fan from the early years and got to basically have us as her Wussy jukebox. We turned it into a practice and played stuff we never play out. There are times when it’s particularly nice to be in a band and this was in some ways the most musically fun part of the tour so far. Of course I hope it’s not repeated too often for if people don’t come to the shows we won’t have money to pour into our gas tank.

Tomorrow is Wenatchee. Really looking forward to it.